Wireline quality underwater wireless communication using high speed acoustic modems

Abstract

The paper introduces LinkQuest Inc.'s cutting-edge high speed underwater acoustic modems. LinkQuest Inc. combined advances in high speed digital communication with broadband underwater acoustics in the development of the high speed modems. Advanced broadband spread spectrum technology results in dramatically increased data rate and robustness and decrease in power consumption. The modems are proven to perform at high data rate with virtually no communication errors under ambient noise, ship noise from small powerboats and large DP vessels and offshore drilling noise. The paper describes the working principles and architectures of the advanced modems and their interface to underwater instruments such as acoustic Doppler current profilers. Performance results from various customer deployments such as real-time monitoring of current profiles from Shell's Ocean Worker Platform are presented.